SHELF LIFE ■

PROBABLY the most taxing choice facing any book lover has always been the most hash one: What to lead next? Since 1986, a mail-order book company called A Common Reader has been making strong recommendations in its very selective catalogues. It is now also a publishing company, with its own line of Common Reader Editions, and has just begun a very promising imprint called Rediscoveries London, whose purpose is “to see returned to print favorite books that have been undeservedly neglected—20th-century classics and near-classics to be read with pleasure in the 21st.” Advising this imprint is a stellar convocation of English writers, chaired by John Train and including historians John Julius Norwich and Thomas Pakenham.

The first offering in the series is Come, Tell Me How You Live (207 pp., $18.95) by Agatha Christie Mallowan, the noted mystery writer. The book was selected by David Pryce-Jones, a member of the advisory group who is well known to readers of National Review as the author of discerning articles on international affairs. Christie’s book is a thoroughly charming memoir, first published in 1946, of her experiences on an expedition to Syria with her husband, the prominent archeologist Max Mallowan. Her enthusiasm is infectious, from the very beginning—when she is asked to apply her bulk to the purpose of closing suitcases (“‘If you can’t make them shut,’ says Max ungallantly, ‘nobody can!”’)—to her final “El Hamdu Lillah” (“We all praise God together”).

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PROBABLY the most taxing choice facing any book lover has always been the most hash one: What to lead next? Since 1986, a mail-order book company called A Common Reader has been making strong recommendations in its very selective catalogues. It is now also a publishing company, with its own line of Common Reader Editions, and has just begun a very promising imprint called Rediscoveries London, whose purpose is “to see returned to print favorite books that have been undeservedly neglected—20th-century classics and near-classics to be read with pleasure in the 21st.” Advising this imprint is a stellar convocation of English writers, chaired by John Train and including historians John Julius Norwich and Thomas Pakenham.

The first offering in the series is Come, Tell Me How You Live (207 pp., $18.95) by Agatha Christie Mallowan, the noted mystery writer. The book was selected by David Pryce-Jones, a member of the advisory group who is well known to readers of National Review as the author of discerning articles on international affairs. Christie’s book is a thoroughly charming memoir, first published in 1946, of her experiences on an expedition to Syria with her husband, the prominent archeologist Max Mallowan. Her enthusiasm is infectious, from the very beginning—when she is asked to apply her bulk to the purpose of closing suitcases (“‘If you can’t make them shut,’ says Max ungallantly, ‘nobody can!”’)—to her final “El Hamdu Lillah” (“We all praise God together”).